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Meaning, intention, and application: Speech act theory in the hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer
Trinity Journal, Fall 2002 by Blue, Scott A
B. Speech Act Theory and Authorial Intent
Both Watson and Vanhoozer are proponents of speech act theory and its implications for hermeneutics. They differ, however, in the scope of their treatment of speech acts and its role in defining authorial intent. Watson, in Text and Truth, uses speech act theory in two ways: to establish writing as a communicative action and to define the intent of an author. Watson states:
Like speech, writing bears within it an essential reference to its origin in human action, and without this it cannot be understood. Writing is a technology that makes possible the extension of a particular speech-act in time and space; or, rather, writing is that speech-act . . which intends a context beyond the range of the human voice. It is a communicative action in the sense that it is an action directed, in the first instance, not towards some aspect of the non-human environment but towards other humans.89
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As to the authorial intent, Watson's use of speech act theory allows him to move the literal sense beyond "the expression of a series of words bearing a certain meaning" to an intended communicative action that focuses on determinate meaning as "the vehicle of illocutionary and perlocutionary force."90
Vanhoozer likewise finds in speech act theory a means for discussing writing as a communicative action and a reformulated discussion of authorial intent. But he moves beyond Austin and Searle's tripartite distinction between locution, illocution, and perlocution. To these three, Vanhoozer adds the "interlocution." Consistent with his conviction that language is both a medium of communication and communion, the interloctionary dimension "highlights the essential nature of the covenant of discourse, namely, that it is a means of personal communication and communion."91 The interlocutionary function of language expresses the characteristic of humans as "covenantal agents." Human beings have stories that depend on how we exercise our communicative rights and assume our communicative responsibilities.92
The issues of authorial intention and speech act theory highlight a crucial distinction between Watson and Vanhoozer. Though both reject a mere psychological description of authorial intent, they differ with regards to whether intention is restricted to illocutions or incorporates perlocutionary elements as well. Watson asserts that the intention of the author cannot be limited to verbal meaning or its illocutionary force. Rather "authorial intention is to be seen as primarily embodied in the words the author wrote -in their verbal meaning together with their illocutionary and perlocutionary force."93 This, in turn, allows Watson to view the future of writing as openended, including the loss of control by its author:
It is integral to written communicative actions that their effect may be indefinitely extended in space and in time, and that the scope of this effect is largely beyond the control of the author. If the relative permanence of the written communicative action subjects it to the contingencies of an open future, then that is what is intended in the act of writing itself.94
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